More on 405 Lines

n the United Kingdom
there was never the proliferation of broadcasters that appeared in many other countries.
The first was an organisation of radio receiver manufacturers who in 1922 persuaded the British government to
award them a licence to broadcast material of an informative and entertaining nature rather than merely engineering tests,
which was all they were allowed to transmit previously. They grandly called themselves The British Broadcasting Company (BBC)
and five years later in 1927 they were incorporated by royal charter as the British Broadcasting Corporation,
financed by receiver licence fees and, for a while, a tax on valves.

The first time this monopoly was broken was in 1955 when the Independent Television Authority (ITA)
was formed to transmit commercial television programmes (the so-called Independent Television - ITV) in competition with the BBC.
On 12 July 1972 its remit was expanded to encompass local radio stations and it became the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA).
Since then, other authorities have come and gone, and broadcasters operate in the UK in a less regulated and more fluid environment,
but the BBC remains as the only non-commercial public service broadcaster.

The BBC was distinctly cold about television at first.
A lot of the development was done by companies such as EMI and Marconi,
and of course the enterprising John Logie Baird who promoted his mechanical system
at every opportunity and even managed to persuade a BBC engineer
to transmit his signals after closedown on medium wave.
In 1932 the BBC was persuaded to take over test transmissions on Baird's crude system,
but it soon became apparent that the time had come for a proper high-definition public television service and in 1936 the
government empowered the BBC to start tests using Baird's improved 240-line mechanical system
alongside a new all-electronic system.

So the 405-line monochrome television began service on 2 November 1936 from a BBC
transmitter at Alexandra Palace on channel B1 in vhf
Band I
(vision 45.00MHz, sound 41.50MHz). The system had been devised in 1934 by
three members of the EMI research team meeting one Sunday morning
at the home of Alan Dower Blumlein. Their intention had been to
design a pulse divider to drive an all-electronic version of the
Baird 240-line standard, but they realised it would be a simple
matter to jump from 243-lines (3x3x3x3) to 405-lines (3x3x3x5) , and so the new system
was born.

Resolution comparison

Early 405-line transmissions were viewed on sets with screen sizes around 12 inches diagonal.
This is about the same resolution (just over 20 lines per centimetre) as a 15-inch 525-line set,
a 19-inch 625-line set
or a 42-inch high-definition (1920 x 1080) widescreen set.

The transmissions were originally double sideband, and even when
vestigial sideband transmissions were introduced, there was always
a gap in the Band I plan where Ally Pally's upper sideband used to
be. The service was shut down on 2 September 1939 for the duration
of the war, and when transmissions recommenced in 1946 they were
still on the old 405-line standard, rather than the 625-line one
that was being proposed elsewhere in Europe. In 1955 the ITA opened
the first commercial television station broadcasting to London. It
used the same transmission standard, System A, as classified by the CCIR (Comité Consultatif International des
Radio Communications - the International Radio Consultative
Committee) around 1950, but a higher frequency band -
Band III.

In the late 1950s and early after-closedown
experimental colour transmissions were made from the BBC's London
transmitter using a variant of the American
NTSC
(National Television Systems Committee) colour system adapted for 405-line/50
fields per second operation.
The tests became quite comprehensive,
featuring slides, films, live studio camerawork and even outside broadcasts.
Receivers were installed in people's homes to assess the problems involved with reception,
but of course demonstrations were also given at the studio to visiting parties.
At first both the studio and transmitter were housed at Alexandra Palace,
but in 1957 the Crystal Palace site was brought into use and from there uhf and 625-line NTSC colour test transmissions were eventially made.
The ITA favoured the French
SECAM
(Système en Couleur à Mémoire) and
made some test transmissions in the autumn of 1962 to assess monochrome receiver compatibility.

The ITV colour tests are less-well documented than the BBC ones,
but Michael Cox, then working for ABC Television at Teddington, Middlesex,
remembers that in 1963 attention switched to 625-line SECAM,
PAL
and
NIR
tests in anticipation of the opening of a second 625-line service along the lines of BBC2, the 625-line uhf sister service to BBC1.
However, when no announcement was forthcoming from the new Labour government
by 1965, ABC began demonstrating 405-line colour using the PAL system,
in the hope of starting a colour service sooner rather than later.
It was eventually announced that the only colour standard would be System I 625-lines PAL,
to be introduced firstly on BBC2 from mid 1967,
and that BBC1 and ITV would continue on 405-lines vhf in monochrome only
until 1970 when they would be duplicated in 625-line PAL colour on uhf.
(The duplicated services actually started in November 1969,
making 405-line receivers redundant in some areas for the first time.)

Meanwhile, on 20 March 1966 ATV, the programme contractor for London (weekends)
and the Midlands (weekdays), recorded an episode of their flagship variety show
"Sunday Night at the London Palladium" in colour as an experiment.
This was probably produced by ATV's new four-camera colour unit
on the US 525/60 NTSC standard,
as Lew Grade required a showreel that he could hawk around the American networks.
The results look rather mediocre, especially as the normal monochrome stage set,
costume and lighting designs were used
(the live ITV transmission was via the monochrome cameras and Outside Broadcast Unit as usual).
The three cameras evident in these stills do not appear to have been matched for white balance,
and in one of them the green pick-up tube seems to have slipped out of alignment
during a shot, and so it was probably out of action for the rest of the evening.

The first departure from 405-lines had been made in April 1964 with the
introduction of BBC2 in London on channel E33 in
Band IV
on 625-lines. It was proposed that
four networks
nationwide should be
available on the uhf bands IV and V, and that as well as the existing BBC1 and
ITV services being duplicated there in 625-line PAL colour,
a new, fourth, channel would be added at a later date.
Following the addition of colour to BBC2 in 1967 and to BBC1 and ITV in 1969,
the uhf network expanded rapidly in the 1970s. Channel Four, a public
service network financed originally by advertising revenue from the
ITV companies, began in November 1982, on uhf 625-lines only.

As the 625-line uhf service progressed, it was decided to close
down the 405-line service in a piecemeal manner between 1982 and
1986, starting with the smaller transmitters and ending with the
main ones. However, by 1984 it was clear that not many viewers
still watched 405-line sets and the close-down was accelerated. The
last main transmitters were ceremonially shut down on 2-3
January 1985. At the same time
it was decided that Bands I and III should no longer be used for
broadcasting in the UK, and so the spectrum was sold off to other
services.
Fifteen of the BBC sites and four of the ITA/IBA sites
only ever radiated 405-line television transmissions
and have not been re-used for broadcasting services since.

405-line television had also been used in the Irish Republic,
starting on 30 December 1960,
bringing its 625-line-originated service to owners of 405-line-only receivers who had bought
them to pick up the BBC and ITV signals from the UK.
Its last 405-line System A transmitter,
at Letterkenny, Donegal, closed on 23 November 1982,
though 625-line System I transmitters continued to use vhf
in Ireland until the analogue closedown in November 2012.

Transmitter Summary

his graphic (click on the thumbnail to
see it full-size - 250KB, A4 at 150dpi) is a paste-up from
three booklets. The BBC transmitter list comes from BBC Television
and Radio Stations 1981. The ITV transmitter list comes from the
IBA Pocket Guide to Transmitting Stations, June 1980. The maps and
frequency information are taken from BBC & ITA Television
Transmitters, second edition, published by Belling-Lee Aerials
Limited in 1967.

The transmitter lists represent the state of the networks after
completion. The transmitters in the first batch that were due to
close in the year 1982 are indicated in the tables.

An alphabetical list of BBC
and ITA/IBA
405-line transmitters including National Grid References
is also available as a web page.

Experimental colour transmissions were carried out by the BBC in
the 1950s. Colour coding system: NTSC; Subcarrier Frequency: 2.6578125MHz.
In the autumn of 1962 the
ITA conducted transmission tests in 405-line colour in
SECAM, and in 1965 ABC Television demonstrated 405-lines PAL. The SECAM fm subcarrier frequency was nominally 2.66MHz with a deviation of ±250kHz and the PAL subcarrier was 2.66034375MHz.

ITA Transmitters

hen the act bringing the ITA into being
reached the statute books on 30 July 1954 the Authority had no
engineers. The ITA board met for the first time on 4 August,
franchises were advertised for on 25 August and the first were
accepted on 26 October, but it was not until December that the
Authority appointed its first Chief Engineer.

The assumption had been that the BBC would be invited to provide
the transmitting facilities using its existing sites for the new
network, and indeed the BBC formally offered to do so almost as
soon as the ITA had been set up. However, the authority soon
decided to design and install its own transmitters, though it was
keen to use BBC masts wherever possible.

It became clear very early on however that the BBC masts were
not ideally situated, and were physically incapable of taking the
aerials required, to provide coverage on Band III similar to the
BBC's on its very much lower-frequency Band I channels. Thus the
ITA transmitter network was started from scratch, and commenced
with test transmissions from a Belling & Lee caravan that
enabled receiving aerials and sets to be installed in the months
prior to the official start of the service on 22 September 1955.

One of the captions pictured above invited viewers to send in reception reports.
Robin Benson did just that, and was rewarded with this QSL
(radio-ese for confirmation of reception) card,
which he has kindly allowed me to put here.

ITV Companies

At the start of ITV in 1955 folk had difficulty distinguishing between ITA (the authority)
and ITV (the service) and used the initials interchangeably.
It is rumoured that Lew Grade chose "ATV" as the name of his company serving the Midlands and London
because both sets of locals pronounced it almost the same as "ITV".

As the network spread, the companies that were allocated franchises became household names in their region
and had strong links with the communities they served.
If the franchise were reallocated in a region there was something of a culture shock for a while.

Nowadays, franchises are no longer up for grabs,
and the companies that were last allocated them in the twentieth century have mostly disappeared.
All the English and Welsh companies merged with either Carlton (London) or Granada (NW England)
and then they too eventually merged to become a single company known as ITV.

Only in Northern Ireland (UTV) and Scotland (STV, a merger of Grampian, Scottish and Borders)
are the programme suppliers still independent with a strong regional identity.
In the rest of the UK there are news magazines and the occasional regional documentary series,
but the main difference between Northumberland and Cornwall, Cumbria and Kent is in the particular adverts that are shown.

The comments about the regional franchise-holders in the entries below were written around the turn of the century,
before the final amalgamation of all the English and Welsh contractors into ITV Limited.
I have left them in for old times' sake.

he following contour maps are
taken from the ITA yearbook "ITV 1967" and represent the state of
the ITV network at the end of the first phase of development, when
the original companies were all on the air. New franchises were
about to be awarded, and new companies would start in 1968.

The ITV 405-lines vhf network began with the Croydon transmitter
at Beulah Hill in London, opened on 22 September 1955. The last
transmitter to be opened was Newhaven, a dependant of Chillerton
Down in the South of England, on 3 August 1970. They were closed
down in reverse order, starting with Newhaven amongst others in
1982 and finishing with Croydon and the main regional transmitters
on 2 and 3 January 1985.

Only three vhf transmitters (Newhaven, Ballycastle and Aviemore)
were opened by the ITA after the official start of the uhf service
in November 1969.

Key to Contour Maps

Please click on the thumbnails to
see the full-size charts, which are about 150KB in length and
should print just less than A4 size at 150dpi.

London

London was naturally the first region to have an ITV service
when the Croydon transmitter went on the air on 22 September
1955.

The BBC had begun television transmissions in 1936 from
Alexandra Palace in north west London, but had recently moved to
Crystal Palace, so the ITA chose a nearby site, Beulah Hill in
Croydon, for their first station. The mast they used was a 200ft
standard design, but the 10kW sender was the first-ever Band III
transmitter to be constructed in the UK and was in fact the
laboratory prototype. After a few months a production-line version
of the transmitter was installed as a stand-by unit and the output
of this was later combined with the original to double the
operating power.

For the next few years the ITA concentrated on building stations
up and down the country at the expense of improving the London
coverage, but in 1962 Croydon sported a new slim 500ft tower and a
maximum erp of 400kW.

Rediffusion Television Monday to Friday
Associated Rediffusion dropped the "Associated" part of its name
after a franchise re-jig, though it seems to have reacquired it now
(though not its franchise) as an independent production company.
Rediffusion had a pop show at 7pm on
Fridays called "Ready, Steady, Go! The Weekend Starts Here". How
prophetic they were, since when they lost the weekday contract to
Thames in 1968 the changeover time was brought forward to 7pm on
Fridays, when London Weekend Television took over until midnight on
Sundays. Thames themselves lost the weekday contract to Carlton in
1993, but LWT continues at weekends.

ATV Network Saturday and Sunday
Associated Television management included many important theatrical impresarios,
and acts that had remained unavailable to BBC television
suddenly started appearing on the commercial channels.

In the nineteen-sixties ATV were in the forefront of selling UK shows to America,
and by 1966 had their own four-camera colour tv unit based on the US NTSC system
producing shows at Elstree Studios and outside broadcasts.

Following the experimental colour recording of Sunday Night at the London Palladium
on 20 March 1966 (see above)
ATV produced a further six of them in 1966
along with a couple of dramas, Ivanov and The Tormentors,
and launched several light entertainment series
featuring stars such as Tom Jones and Engelbert Humperdinck recorded simultaneously
on the 525-line NTSC colour system and 405-line monochrome,
using two cameras at each position.
Although both cameras took similar shots,
the 'talent' could only look into one at once.
Inevitably they were directed to work to the NTSC cameras,
making them look rather shifty to UK viewers.

This picture shows a similar set-up of two cameras in a Rediffusion studio.

By the time that ITV colour began in the UK in 1969,
electronic standards converters
(as opposed to optical ones used for monochrome conversions,
and unsuitable for colour)
were available and so such internationally-aimed shows were made on the US system only,
and converted to 625-line PAL and 405-line monochrome for broadcast in the UK.

Midlands

Lichfield was the second ITA transmitter and began its service
on 17 February 1956.

As with Croydon, an available mast and temporary transmitter
were pressed into service in order to get the station on the air.
First one, and then a second 5kW sender was employed, but by the
end of the year a 20kW set was installed giving an erp of 200kW
from the 450ft mast to serve the north Midlands. In July 1961 a
1 000ft mast was constructed, but the signal to the north and
east was kept deliberately low to avoid interference to other
services.

The Membury station was brought into service on 30 April 1965 to
serve the south of the area. From its 500ft mast it received the
off-air channel 8 signal from Lichfield and rebroadcast it on
channel 12 with a maximum erp of 30kW and horizontal polarization
in order to avoid interference to the Caradon Hill service.

ATV Network Monday to Friday ATV just keeps on
going, though in 1982 it was forced to restructure, and take the
name "Central". In 1968 it won the seven-day contract for the
Midlands and lost its London franchise. In 1993 after Prime Minister
Thatcher had removed any requirement for programme quality
from the renewal bids, Central offered a paltry few thousands of
pounds and still won the contract. It was soon swallowed up
by Carlton, though.

ABC Television Saturday and Sunday
ABC Television was a subsidiary of the Associated British Picture Corporation, the national cinema chain.
ATV's and ABC's Midlands studios were housed in a converted ABC cinema in Birmingham.

North of England

The third region to have ITV, the North required two Band III
transmitters to cover the same area as the BBC's Holme Moss. Winter
Hill to the west of the Pennines started on 3 May 1956 and Emley
Moor in Yorkshire followed six months later on 13 November.

Sixteen possible locations for the Yorkshire station were
studied theoretically, and balloon transmitter tests were made at a
shortlist of four before Emley Moor was finally chosen and a 450ft
tower built to launch the service.

The contour maps shown are for the tubular steel construction
masts brought into service in 1966, replacing the smaller lattice
towers at both stations. The 1 265ft mast at Emley Moor iced
up and collapsed in March 1969, six months before the start of the
three-channel uhf colour service. A temporary mast was erected,
followed by the present concrete structure, at the time the highest
of its kind in Europe, as was the tubular mast before it along with
its twin at Belmont. The tubular steel mast built at Winter Hill is
1 015ft high.

When the ITV franchise was split in 1968 the BBC added a Band
III transmitter to Winter HIll in order to transmit the Manchester
version of Look North. A new version produced in Leeds was
transmitted from the existing Holme Moss Band I transmitter. There
were several BBC Band III filler stations around the country,
including one at Belmont which carried the BBC1 Leeds service
(whereas the ITV service was from Anglia TV in Norwich).

Granada Television Monday to Friday
Granada is still going strong, of course. In 1968 it won the
seven-day franchise for the North West, when the Yorkshire region
was advertised separately.

ABC Television Saturday and Sunday
ABC held the weekend contract in the North and Midlands regions,
with studios in converted ABC cinemas in both Birmingham (which it
shared with ATV) and Manchester. It lost its weekend contract in 1968, when
Granada, Yorkshire and ATV took over the North and Midlands seven
days a week,
though it won the London weekday contract by becoming part of Thames.

The present self-supporting concrete tower at Emley Moor
completed in 1972. The height is 900ft with a base diameter of 80ft
tapering to 20ft at the top.

The 1 265ft tubular steel mast under construction at
Emley. The 450ft lattice tower which it was to replace can be seen
to the left.

From an ITA press release of 1965:I.T.A.-B.B.C. Aerial Masts.- The final stages in the
contruction of a 1,265 ft cylindrical television mast at Emley
Moor, near Huddersfield, Yorks has now been reached. This mast,
which is the tallest structure in Europe, is one of three being
built by B.I.C.C. and E.M.I. to a new design for the I.T.A. and
will be shared with the B.B.C. The other masts are located at
Winter Hill, Lancs. (1,015 ft) and Belmont, Lincs.
(1,265 ft). The mast consists of a 9 ft diameter steel
tube (with a lift inside to give access to the aerials) for the
first 900 ft. At the top of this is a 365 ft lattice
structure to carry the television aerials, which will be enshrouded
by a fibreglass tube. Starting from the top, the aerial sighting
is: 1 and 2. Two u.h.f. aerials each capable of
carrying two services; 3. Band III aerial for the I.T.A. (to
replace the aerial on the existing tower); 4. Band III aerial
for future development; 5. Band II aerial capable of carrying
three f.m. sound services; 6. Outside broadcast dishes for the
B.B.C.; 7. Dishes for the G.P.O.; and 8. Outside
broadcast dishes for the I.T.A. The present mast is in the
background.

Central Scotland

The first region outside England to get ITV, Central Scotland's
service began on 31 August 1957 from Black Hill.

The original 750ft mast at Black Hill incorporated a novel
16-stack directional aerial system that was mounted inside the
lattice structure of the mast rather than outside or on top, as was
the usual practice. The intention was to reduce wind loading and
icing-up. Unfortunately, the anticipated polar response pattern and
polarisation were not obtained, but it wasn't until 10 July 1961
that a 1 000ft mast with a more conventional array was brought
into service.

Scottish Television seven days a week
Scottish continues to serve Central Scotland

A highly-trained ITA technician dons his standard-issue
white lab coat in order to track down the radiated signal from the
original Black Hill mast.

South Wales and the West of England

The St Hilary transmitter brought programmes to South Wales and
the West on 14 January 1958 making it the fifth ITV region to
open.

Serving the area around the Severn Estuary and Bristol Channel
St Hilary radiated 200kW erp omnidirectionally from a 750ft mast.
The ITA would have preferred a 1 000ft tower, but the
proximity to Rhoose Airport precluded this. The shorter wavelength
Band III signals provided much poorer coverage than that enjoyed by
the BBC's Band I service, and disappointed viewers had to install
hefty directional receiving aerials and fringe-area receivers.

TWW seven days a week in the English language
TWW stands for Television Wales and West.

South and South-East England

The opening of the Chillerton Down station on 30 August 1958
made this the sixth region to receive ITV.

Covering central southern England, Chillerton Down was built
near to the BBC's Rowridge station on the Isle of Wight. Opposition
to the second mast was only marginally less strong than that to the
alternative of an enlarged shared station at Rowridge itself, but a
slim 750ft mast was eventually accepted.

The site chosen to serve the east of the area, at Dover,
provided the required coverage with no problem, but reducing the
power radiated backwards across the Channel towards France proved a
headache for ITA engineers. After a protracted series of test
transmissions during which receiving equipment mounted aboard a
helicopter was used to ascertain the true radiation pattern the
station went on full power from its 750ft mast on 31 January
1960.

Southern Independent Television seven days a
week
How! Southern lost to TVS in 1984, who themselves were replaced by
Meridian in 1993. The franchise boundaries along the south coast
have also changed since 1967.

North-East England

Seventh in line, the North-East service opened on 15 January
1959 from the Burnhope transmitter.

Situated a few miles away from the BBC's Pontop Pike station the
directional aerial beamed 100kW erp to the north and south along
extremely hilly terrain which required a 750ft mast to avoid
'shadowing'. It clearly managed this quite successfully, as it was
still the sole 405-line transmitter in the region when the network
was completed. The only other single-transmitter regions were
Channel (Fremont Point), London (Croydon) and Lancashire (Winter
Hill).

Tyne Tees Television seven days a week
Tyne-Tees has kept going, though in the seventies it combined with
YTV in Trident Television, which was later split up. Now it has
combined with Yorkshire again, and also Granada, and they're all in
bed with Carlton.

Northern Ireland

The eighth region was Northern Ireland, served by Black Mountain
from 13 October 1959.

750ft was the highest mast that could be used at Black Mountain
because of the nearby airport. 100kW was radiated to the north- and
south-west, but only 20kW to the east in order to reduce
interference in the Winter Hill service area. The Strabane station,
opened on 18 February 1963 was similarly constrained with an erp of
90kW from its 1 000ft mast to the north and south and 10kW to
the east and west to prevent signals straying into the Republic of
Ireland.

Ulster Television seven days a week
Ulster is still going. Does no one else want these far-flung
outposts?

East of England

East Anglia, the ninth ITV region region to open, was served by
Mendlesham from 27 October 1959.

A transmission site to the south-east of the required service
area was chosen in order to reduce interference in the Chillerton
Down service area and in France. To compensate, the erp beamed
towards the intended service area to the north and west was 200kW
from a 1 000ft mast. Like many ITA masts, this was the tallest
to have been built in Europe at the time, and was the first of six
1 000ft masts to be used around the country.

Two further stations opened in 1965. Sandy Heath (13 July)
rebroadcast signals received directly from Mendlesham at an erp of
30kW to the north towards Bedfordshire from a 750ft mast. Belmont
(20 December), designated a main station because it was to be
shared with the BBC, was furnished with the first of the ITA's
1 265ft 'tallest in Europe' tubular steel masts. Radiating its
20kW erp signals throughout Lincolnshire it rebroadcast Anglia
programmes received from Mendlesham at Massingham in Norfolk that
were then microwaved to Winceby in Lincolshire and thence to
Belmont near Louth.

Anglia Television seven days a week
Another survivor of every franchise renewal, though the Belmont
area was lost to Yorkshire in the nineteen-seventies
after a period of schizophrenia when its viewers saw different regional versions of ITV and BBC.
The Anglia Knight
information is taken from a postcard sold by Anglia Television in
the sixties.

The ITA were nothing if not patriotic as they demonstrate here
by flying the union flag at the Belmont station.

South-West England

The two transmitters at Stockland Hill and Caradon Hill brought
the number of ITV regions into double figures on 29 April 1961.

Two stations were required in order to provide similar coverage
to that of the BBC's North Hessary Tor transmitter which was
situated centrally within the region on Dartmoor, and 750ft masts
were needed because of the hilly terrain. Caradon Hill radiated a
tight figure-of-eight pattern with an erp of 200kW in order to
reach Land's End, but to avoid interfering with Dublin. Similarly
Stockland Hill had a boomerang-shaped pattern with lobes to the
north- and south-west. The erp in those directions was 100kW, but
only 10kW was radiated to the east towards Croydon which used the
same channel, 9. Some energy had to be directed towards Alderney to
feed the Channel Islands transmitters, but that was restricted to
20kW - just sufficient in practice to provide a high enough
signal-to-noise ratio for rebroadcast.

Westward Television seven days a week
The franchise situation southwest of the Wash has always been volatile,
and Westward went west in 1982 to be replaced by TSW, which lost
its franchise in 1993 to West Country Television.

Borders

The ITV service for the Borders, the eleventh region so start,
began on 1 September 1961 from Caldbeck, closely followed by
Selkirk on 1 December.

Here, two principal transmitters were used to serve two separate
populated areas, divided by the Cheviots. A radiation pattern of
70kW to the north-west, across the Solway Firth, and 100kW erp to
the north-east and south-west from the 1 000ft mast at
Caldbeck penetrated far enough to feed both Selkirk and Richmond
Hill, which each rebroadcast the signal. Power was restricted to
20kW to the south-east in order to avoid interference to other
services. Selkirk, serving Berwick-upon-Tweed with an erp of 25kW
from its 750ft mast, was the first unmanned remotely-controlled
station to be set up by the Authority. Richmond Hill on the Isle of
Man used the original 200ft mast from Croydon, suitably
strengthened in anticipation of its carrying uhf aerials in the
future, and began transmitting on channel 8 on 26 March 1965.

Border Television seven days a week
Border Television is still with us, though thankfully it has ceased
production of "Mr and Mrs" with Derek Batey.

North-East Scotland

A flurry of activity on 30 September 1961 brought the twelfth
ITV service to life from the Durris and Mounteagle
transmitters.

Whilst Mounteagle was conventionally sited near to the existing
BBC station at Rosemarkie, Durris was a departure from this and
attempted to cover the 100 miles of coastline from Arbroath to
Peterhead. It did so from a 1 000ft mast beaming power in two
400kW erp lobes to the north and to the south-west. Rumster Forest,
opened on 25 June 1965, brought coverage to Orkney and Caithness by
rebroadcasting the Mounteagle signal. On 15 October that year
reception in Dundee was improved when Angus came on air,
rebroadcasting programmes from Durris. Each was unmanned and
remotely controlled from its parent station.

Grampian Television seven days a week
Grampian has survived all three contract renewals.

Channel Islands

Lucky Channel Islanders joined the ITV network as the thirteenth
region on 1 September 1962 when the Fremont Point transmitter was
brought into service.

Because of the remoteness of the Channel Islands it was not
possible to use a microwave link to send programmes to the
transmitter at Fremont Point. Instead, a normal ITV transmission
had to be received off-air from a south-coast station and
rebroadcast. Unfortunately, the only channel available for use on
the Islands that would not suffer from, or cause, interference was
channel 9, which was the same one used by the nearest mainland
station at Stockland Hill, which was the intended source for
rebroadcasting. For that reason a receiving station using a 30ft parabolic dish aerial was built at Braye Bay on
Alderney which sent on the signals by microwave to Fremont Point.
Alderney viewers had to make do with direct reception of Chillerton
Down on channel 11, and that was also used as a back-up signal when
interference was too bad to use the Stockland Hill signal. A
further alternative was to rebroadcast the Caradon Hill channel 12
signals received on Jersey at Fremont Point itself.

625 Lines and Digital for the Channel Islands

625-line uhf colour transmissions did not start from Fremont
Point until July 1976 because of the problems of receiving the much
shorter wavelength transmissions from Stockland Hill. A
revolutionary type of aerial called SABRE (Steerable Adaptive
Broadcast Reception Equipment) was developed which uses circuitry
to tweak the response of the array in order to obtain the best
signal from Stockland Hill whilst nulling out interference from the
handful of transmitters around Europe that use the same channel as
their signal levels rise and fall with the ever-changing
propagation conditions.

There is an in-depth article written by three of the IBA engineers who worked on the SABRE project on Mike Brown's MB21 website.
It is taken from IBA Technical Review 17,
all 24 of which are available for download as pdf files
on the Memorabilia page
of the NTL Pension Association web site.

All analogue television transmissions have now ceased in the Channel Islands.
The regional BBC1 and ITV1 services,
amongst hundreds more,
are available on DVB-S satellite
and the three DVB-T public service multiplexes (BBC, commercial and High Definition)
are now available from all eight uhf terrestrial stations on the islands.

Channel Television seven days a week
Channel chugs along still, though its output is, as in the past,
largely based on programmes from the south west region of the network.

Wales - Teledu Cymru

Wales was the last of the regions to get its own ITV service,
which started from Presely on 14 September 1962. However, the
original contractor, Wales West and North (WWN) suffered such heavy
losses that it was obliged to merge with the Wales and West
contractor TWW in May 1963.

A chain of re-broadcast links took the signals for the Wales service
(which included both English and Welsh language programmes)
around the Welsh coast from Presely to Arfon and then via a
receiver and microwave transmitter on Anglesey to Moel-y-Parc. When
the channel 7 service from St Hilary began in February 1965, its
coverage was intended to match that of the channel 10 English-only
service, but because the aerials had to be mounted lower down the
mast it was in many areas rather poorer.

TWW (Television Wales and West) seven days a week in
the Welsh language
TWW was colloquially known as Telly-Welly-Wales. No wonder it lost
its franchise in 1968 to Harlech, which later became known as HTV
and survives to this day.

Test Card F

Test Card F of course is the very icon of colour television with
its innovative use of a picture in the centre circle. It first
appeared on BBC2 in July 1967 but when the BBC1 and ITV networks
were duplicated on 625-lines uhf from 1969 Test Card F was
simultaneously radiated in black and white on 405-lines vhf. The
frequency gratings which are multiples of 0.5MHz on 625 lines work
out at some very strange values on 405 lines - 0.98, 1.63, 2.28,
2.60, 2.93 and 3.41MHz. Since the highest vision frequency
transmitted in System A is 3.0MHz, the finest gratings appear as a
uniform grey block.

If anyone hasn't heard, the model is the then nine-year-old
Carole, daughter of the late George Hersee who died in 2001 and who
designed the test card in 1967.

I have taken the opportunity of presenting Test Card F here at
its 405-line resolution of 377 active lines and 3MHz bandwidth. Not
bad for an old system, is it? For the best effect, zoom the picture
to about ten inches across and hold a large oil-filled plastic lens
in front of your monitor. Want to see it in colour? Attach a sheet
of plastic film stained blue at the top, green at the bottom and a
peachy colour in between.